photos courtesy of Rachel and Twinkle Photo
Being in charge and the primary decision maker is one of the aspects of motherhood that exhausts me the most. Don’t misunderstand, my husband is a wonderful, involved and supportive father. But when it comes to the nitty gritty of the kids’ days, as a stay at home and homeschooling mom, I am generally the first line of defense. So all of that kin keeping, mental load kind of stuff tends to fall to me. The ongoing issues we have with our five year old have weighed heavy on us both for some time. But because I’m with him almost 24 hours a day, I take the brunt of it.
Our second born is a wonderful, sweet and bright child with an equally dramatic darker side. He can be laser focused for an hour with a puzzle that fascinates him and an hour later completely lose his mind over being asked to empty the dishwasher. (A chore we do daily at our house). He can be complimentary in one breath and insulting in the next. He learned to read before he was four by listening to me teach his sister (when I thought he wasn’t listening) and seems to have a knack for seeing patterns, whether it be in letters, numbers or shapes. But his stubborn nature and sometimes daily meltdowns over basic requests and inability to control impulses (such as smearing toothpaste all over the bathroom, just because) were wearing on me.
Last year we finally took him to see a child psychologist who was a former professor of my husband’s. My husband always liked this professor because he never assumed that every person has a diagnosis. After spending an hour with our son (during which time the child was the best behaved I have ever seem and momentarily wondered if he was still the same kid) declared him unlikely to have ADHD and a wonderful and likely gifted child. We had so many people assume he has ADHD, and mostly I thought he was just an active, energetic, boy. I didn’t want my son to think that there is something wrong with him just because his high energy doesn’t fit into the mold of what is considered ideal or acceptable in the current education system.
I didn’t want a label for him, but I did want tools to help us overcome our daily struggles. A year later we find ourselves in the process of getting him evaluated for sensory processing delays. It’s scary because it’s expensive and I haven’t yet wrapped my brain around what all of this means. These are relatively new terms and I’m hoping that at the end of all of this we’ll come up with something that will work.
It was a hard call to make, deciding to walk down this road but my husband and I ultimately decided we had to do what was best, not just for our son, but for our family. We don’t know what’s ahead, but we’re determined to make our way by holding fast to each other in love and hope, believing there are better days ahead.
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